ArticleClinical and translational allergy2020
Anomalous asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease Google Trends patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Article in Clinical and translational allergy, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Impact of Demographic and Clinical Subgroups in Google Trends Data: Infodemiology Case Study on Asthma Hospitalizations.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Tracking the Spread of Pollen on Social Media Using Pollen-Related Messages From Twitter: Retrospective Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Impact of asthma in Europe: A comparison of web search data in 21 European countries.The World Allergy Organization journal · 2023Article
- Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Prescribing of Antiasthmatic Treatments in Portugal: A Nationwide Study.Clinical therapeutics · 2023Article
- Self-Reported Medication Use among Pregnant and Postpartum Women during the Third Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A European Multinational Cross-Sectional Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- United States Influenza Search Patterns Since the Emergence of COVID-19: Infodemiology Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2022Article
- Prediction of Asthma Hospitalizations for the Common Cold Using Google Trends: Infodemiology Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundAn increase in online searches on health topics may either mirror epidemiological changes or reflect media coverage. In the context of COVID-19, this is particularly relevant, as COVID-19 symptoms may be mistaken for those of respiratory disease exacerbations. Therefore, we aimed to assess Internet search patterns on asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in the context of COVID-19, as compared to searches on other chronic diseases.
methodsWe retrieved Google Trends (GTs) data on two respiratory (asthma and COPD) and three non-respiratory (diabetes, hypertension, and Crohn's disease) chronic diseases over the past 5 years (up to May 31, 2020). For 54 countries, and for each disease, we built autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models to predict GTs for 2020 based on 2015-2019 search patterns. In addition, we estimated the proportion of searches in which COVID-19-related terms were used. To assess the potential impact of media coverage on online searches, we assessed whether weekly "asthma" GTs correlated with the number of Google News items on asthma.
resultsOver the past 5 years, worldwide search volumes for asthma and COPD reached their maximum values in March 2020. Such was not observed for diabetes, hypertension and Crohn's disease. In 38 (70%) countries, GTs on asthma were higher in March 2020 than the respective maximum predicted values. This compares to 19 countries for COPD, 23 for hypertension, 11 for Crohn's disease, and 9 for diabetes. Queries with COVID-19-related terms represented up to 47.8% of the monthly searches on asthma, and up to 21.3% of COPD searches. In most of the assessed countries, moderate-strong correlations were observed between "asthma" GTs and the number of news items on asthma.
conclusionsDuring March 2020, there was a peak in searches on asthma and COPD, which was probably mostly driven by media coverage, as suggested by their simultaneity in several countries with different epidemiological situations.
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